Blood and Ember, page 19
The undead sensed life. Vision wasn’t necessary.
The wizard was watching, hands half-raised. However much power it had expended on raising the beast, it clearly had some left.
The ground shook beneath the bear’s paws. It came on slower than it had in life, another gift of the Dark Lady.
Olvir noted that, combined the information with what he’d seen of the wizard’s power, and came to a quick decision—one he didn’t dare shout. They needed every advantage they could get. He bolted back the way they’d come from and hoped Vivian realized what he was trying to do.
He ran at as wide an angle as he could away from where she’d taken cover, zigging and zagging while he went. Behind him, the monster’s feet thudded on. The Twisted wizard had too much control to shout in rage or lacked the parts to do so, but Gizath’s power slashed a wound in the air far to Olvir’s left. Darting a glance in that direction, he saw an amber light flare around Vivian, deflecting the attack. She was running, too, as opposite to Olvir’s direction as she could manage without heading back toward the wizard.
As Olvir had half hoped, the geisbar hesitated as his path and Vivian’s diverged.
When the creature began shambling after Vivian, it was the better part of tactics to let it. Vivian was lighter, less armored, and, in the coldest thinking, the less essential. Olvir still felt a sickness in the pit of his stomach, distant only because of the battle.
Now the geisbar was between the wizard and one of its targets, though. The Twisted must have worked that out or be running short of power, because the gray fire stopped.
That was when Olvir spun around to face the lumbering undead. He charged, sword flashing in the sunlight and battle cry on his lips: “Tinival and Justice!”
The undead geisbar would have no notion what he was saying, the wizard wouldn’t care, and there were no others to inspire. None of that mattered. The cry drove Olvir’s feet forward, then, as he came to the geisbar’s hind leg, lent power to his arms, his hips, and his blade. He swung hard at a spot he’d noticed from a distance, where the flesh had fallen off and exposed the bone behind its knee completely.
Bone that had been lying in the wilderness for a few days, even geisbar bone, quickly gave way under two hundred pounds, the force of an all-out charge, and keen-edged steel. The leg cracked in two. The geisbar rocked, suddenly off-balance.
Olvir let himself keep going past the creature. The wizard was on the move now and not at all indecisive any longer. A last-second leap sideways brought Olvir barely out of the way of another strike. The light writhed a few inches from the side of his neck, cold and slimy even when it didn’t touch him.
The Twisted had adjusted to them running away. It was a good moment to catch it off guard again—and to see if its shield still held. Olvir spun in a tight half circle and rushed it, head down, pushing himself to go faster when he glimpsed Vivian dodging a swipe of the geisbar’s claws.
It almost worked. The wizard stumbled backward, not nearly fast enough. Olvir started to sweep his sword down from his shoulder, a blow that had left plenty of Twisted with cleft skulls in the past. He braced himself for the backlash if the shield held.
No force struck him. He felt the air beneath his blade resist, then start to give way. His stroke would be slower for it, but Olvir was a large man and a determined one. He thought the blow would do the job.
The wizard clenched one fist. Deep within the horror’s sunken sockets, patterns squirmed across dull gray eyes.
Olvir’s armor clamped down on every side of his chest, then wrenched. Metal links cut through his shirt and bit deep into the skin beneath it, but that sharp pain was the least of his problems. His sword fell as his arm went limp and bloodless. The pressure on his ribs equaled his weight or more. He fell, wheezing, to his knees.
The wizard was too smart to gloat. Its maw wouldn’t smile anyhow. Olvir had no notion what it was thinking. He didn’t know, either, what the oncoming blow would do to him—whether it would be death or unconsciousness so that he could be given to Thyran for a leisurely dismantling.
He knew only that he could do nothing to prevent his fate, whatever it was.
* * *
Hand-length teeth snapped together on the back of Vivian’s doublet. She lunged, then finally shot forward as the leather parted, leaving half her armor in the geisbar’s jaws.
She whipped around as soon as she’d gotten a little distance. The geisbar turned clumsily at best, especially missing a leg, and undead senses were sluggish. While it was trying to work out the change, Vivian dashed back the way she’d come, passing within a few inches of the geisbar’s side.
The thing reeked. She’d smelled decay before, from open graves to untended battlefields, but the geisbar was different. Behind the natural rot lurked a scent like burning hair. Vivian wished she could hold her breath. She needed all the air she could get, though, stinking or not; her lungs were already faintly aching.
She shot past the monster’s dirt-covered flank, caught sight of Olvir and the wizard, and almost did stop breathing.
Training took over and kept her moving even as she saw Olvir’s sword fall to the ground and shrieked internal protest.
She didn’t have time to draw her bow and nock an arrow. The wizard was out of knife’s range. Still running, Vivian recognized futility, thought of the lone move that could have any effect, and started to gasp out the command. “Lethal—”
Lend me your voice first, said Ulamir, urgent. Will you?
Vivian didn’t know what he meant, but they’d been partners for decades. He had a plan. “Yes,” she replied at once.
The geisbar thudded across the ground behind her. Olvir fell to his knees. The wizard stepped forward and placed both its palms on Olvir’s forehead.
Olvir slumped over, then toppled to one side. He went silently, with a strange dignity even when clearly unconscious. Vivian opened her mouth to scream.
The series of sounds that came forth was so deep that they almost burst her throat. Her body shook with the force of them. They moved her jaw at angles that Vivian would never have been able to consciously manage, agonizing contortions that she welcomed.
The sounds sank into the earth, and the earth answered.
Rocks burst up through the ground near the wizard. Most were the size of Vivian’s fist or larger, and the force of their ascent sent up explosions of dirt—dirt now absent from the ground beneath the Twisted’s feet.
Caught by surprise, the mage stumbled back. One of the stones slammed into what passed for its ankle. It fell, clutching at the earth with its distorted hands.
Vivian could almost have felt sorry for the thing. Except, looking at Olvir, she couldn’t.
“Good,” she rasped to Ulamir when she could talk. She hadn’t stopped running while the rocks erupted, and her legs no longer felt like they belonged to her, but that was fine. “Now.”
Now, he agreed, and the lethal blessing surged through them both.
As always, Vivian saw what she was doing for a split second. The wizard had a scar on its chest from an old fight for dominance. Human soldiers had burned one of its legs badly when it had helped attack Oakford. When it had been human itself, before it had gone over to Thyran and been changed to its current form, it had broken its wrist.
None of those wounds were fatal. Even together, they wouldn’t necessarily kill the thing. But when the fault lines made the injuries fresh again, the wizard couldn’t so much as try to get back on its feet.
When Vivian reached its side, the creature was only writhing in pain. Dark blood pooled on the ground beneath it. Vivian lifted Ulamir and thrust him down into its chest, once and then again, then swung him down to decapitate the monster entirely.
That was more than enough for her.
Chapter 32
A none-too-feeling entity had opened up Olvir’s head, briskly rearranged the contents into tidy piles, and slammed it shut again. It was not pleasant. It was one of the least pleasant experiences he’d ever had, in fact, and he’d once taken a large club to his right kneecap.
Slowly, he recognized sensations beyond the pain: cool moisture moving lightly over his skin and a voice saying his name. It was quiet, that voice. Gentle. The pain in his head got worse when Olvir tried to listen, but he thought—oh, he could think again—that was because listening was effort, movement away from stillness and darkness.
The voice was worried.
Olvir put a name to it: Vivian. Her face came back, guiding him away from the darkness, reminding him of the reasons he needed to get through the pain. He forced his eyes to open a crack. Needle-sharp light poured into his brain. It was still midday or so.
“Not long then,” he said, or assumed he said. His throat and mouth both were slow following his commands.
Vivian made the sign of the Four, not bothering to put the damp rag she was holding down first. “You gave me a horrible moment or three there,” she said.
“Sorry,” Olvir managed.
“Hush.” She helped him sit up, then handed him a waterskin. “When you feel ready for it, tell me: do you know who you are?”
The water was impossibly sweet. He could taste the faint flavor of wine in it and the hint of leather, and he loved every second. Discipline kept him from gulping—that and consideration for Vivian, who was sitting beside him with her arm around his shoulders, trying not to openly show any signs of worry.
Pieces of the world kept resolving themselves and taking on meaning: the feel of Vivian’s shoulder and side, for instance, absent her leather armor. The remains had been under Olvir’s head when he woke. There wasn’t much to them any longer. He took another, hasty look at Vivian but saw no serious wounds.
“I’m Olvir Yoralth,” he said, keeping his speech short. His throat hurt. That could have been related to what the wizard had done or to how loudly he’d been yelling beforehand. “I serve Tinival and justice.”
“So you said.” A few of the strain lines on Vivian’s face eased. “It was quite impressive.”
“You’re Vivian. A Sentinel. We’re saving the world. I bear the Heart of Gizath.” He’d been going to ask about the wizard and the geisbar, but his sight was coming back. The nearby landscape told him all he needed to understand.
The geisbar was a small mountain off at the edge of his vision. A bit nearer lay the wizard, or, really, the wizard’s component parts. Vivian had been very thorough. She’d cleaned her arms to the elbow before touching Olvir, he saw now, but her legs were spattered with purple-black blood.
“Smart,” Olvir said and gestured to the Twisted mage’s remains.
“Angry,” Vivian admitted, with a rueful smile that went straight to Olvir’s heart. The pain in his head was still very present. It mattered less at that moment.
He put an arm around her in return, moving carefully in case either of them was more damaged than was obvious. For the most part, Olvir found, his body seemed to be in decent working order, though his muscles were going to have some complaints and his chest felt downright sanded.
“I’m not completely sure why it didn’t kill me,” he said. “Whether it meant to and didn’t have as much force left as it wanted, or the Heart gave me a little resistance to Gizath’s power, or it meant to take me alive if it could.”
“There was no sign one way or another. It touched your forehead, you collapsed—no lights or noises. No expression on the damned thing to read either,” Vivian said flatly. Feeling the communication between her and Ulamir, Olvir suspected she was thinking of the third option, as he was, and of what that would’ve likely meant for him as well as the world. “I wish I’d gotten there sooner.”
She spoke with a matter-of-factness and a lack of self-recrimination that they both were familiar with from other battles. The world was what it was. It would’ve been better in another form. That was nobody’s fault, and nobody could change it.
“We both survived, thank the gods. Very specifically.” As reality became sharper, awe rose up within Olvir again. He looked upward, into the cloudless turquoise sky. “Lord Tinival, you have honored me far above what I deserve today and far beyond what I ever could have expected. I vow to be as worthy of your grace as mortal flesh and will permit.” He paused. “And I vow to praise you more formally as soon as my circumstances allow.”
Once he was capable of kneeling, after all, he’d be capable of walking. At that point, he rather suspected that the god of justice would prefer them to be about their mission, saving the lengthy devotions for when evening brought them to a stop.
* * *
“I’m in no position to say anybody’s earned divine favor,” said Vivian, “but your speech did Him credit, in my opinion.”
That was an understatement. She’d crept to Olvir’s side while he asked the wizard questions, trying to determine whether he was being sincere, feeling Ulamir holding himself in check for whatever was to come. It had been a profound relief when Olvir had finally answered, and then much more than simple relief.
He’d shone. The tall, handsome, wholesome farm boy, the earnest companion of her journey and the diligent servant of the gods, had blazed with starlight and glory for a few moments, even before the Silver Wind had made Himself manifest for Olvir’s protection. The actual divine radiance had seemed almost redundant.
And now he was actually blushing. It was also a relief to see that: his skin had looked nearly bloodless when Vivian had found him.
“Thank you,” he said. “I’m not so vain that I’d say you’re right, but I tried. Besides, I wanted to…to make it clear where I stood, I suppose. I never really had the chance until then. That doesn’t mean I’m glad any of that…” He hesitated, trying to choose a word. Vivian would’ve expected various forms of profanity from others. She didn’t think Olvir was avoiding it as such. It just didn’t come to his tongue as readily as it did most people’s. “…situation happened. I suppose I’m thankful that I found the words when the moment arrived.”
“And I’m glad I was there for it. The questions were good too. Unnerving, but good.”
“I wish I could’ve warned you.”
“It was more convincing without any advance notice.” She hesitated, then looked straight into his hazel eyes. “I know you’d never willingly sign on with Thyran.”
Ulamir was absent. Likely he’d stay that way for longer than usual, given the combined effort of channeling the lethal blessing and summoning the rocks. Everybody else Vivian knew was far away. The land stretched off alien and empty beyond where she and Olvir sat. In all of it, there was no anchor for her except Olvir himself, and she couldn’t let him serve that role.
All she could allow herself was the brief interlude while they sat with their arms around each other and the slight emphasis she’d placed on you. If not for the speech and Tinival’s grace, she very likely wouldn’t have dared that.
For a little while, Olvir was silent. Vivian could hear the river running past them in the distance. They hadn’t run so far, or perhaps they’d come back farther than she’d realized. She hadn’t paid any attention to the geography.
“I wouldn’t,” Olvir said slowly, meeting her gaze steadily. “But I’m honored by your faith. You don’t owe it to me. I know that you have your duty, and I wouldn’t want you to swerve from it for a second. Not for my sake.”
Vivian knew one fact in that moment, heart-deep, and figured out another.
From the way Olvir regarded her, the thoughtful precision of what he said, and all the empty space where he kept silent, she was fairly sure of what he was telling her: that he knew, as much as he could let himself know, the mission she hadn’t told him about. He might not be able to put it into words, even in his head, for fear of revealing too much to his other self. Still, if their quest didn’t end well, it would be no shock to Olvir when Ulamir came down.
He was saying, as clearly as he believed it was safe to say, that it was all right.
That was the conclusion Vivian figured out. She nodded, said “Thank you,” and knew the other fact with every breath.
If worst came to almost worst, if Vivian had to kill Olvir to keep Gizath from returning fully to the world, she would do it. She wouldn’t hesitate. There was a larger world at stake, full of people who loved each other as deeply as she’d come to love her knight. For their sake, she would strike without flinching if it had to be done.
She knew, as she sat with Olvir on the edge of the river, that the act would break her.
Part IV
Now Veryon knew how little regard Gizath had for him. The god had made that plain. Still, he had no suspicion. None then living would have thought of treachery—none but Gizath himself.
“Who is that coming toward us?” asked the Traitor. Veryon turned, all amiability, to greet whatever new arrival Gizath might have sighted.
The tragedy is, in part, that murder was so easily accomplished.
—The First Betrayal
The Dark Lady weeps forever, for a love she’ll see no more,
And the gods say nothing of the cause.
To this day, the world winds on in shadow and in pain…
—Lines from “Shapes of Wind and Night,” by the poet Elyan
Chapter 33
There wasn’t time for pain: not for Olvir’s, which was obvious, or for Vivian’s, which she hoped she hid.
Neither of them had broken bones, all their bruises would heal, none of their cuts needed binding, and Olvir’s pupils were both the same size. That would have to suffice.
